Startup Camp and UnConference

I just came back from two days of intense information swapping with a couple of hundred other internet startups and I have to say I felt as if instead of New York I was actually somewhere in Silicon Valley. Labeled the "Start-up Camp: An Un-Conference" by its organizers, the event was unique in that the participants decided what topics to cover in many of the break-out sessions, as opposed to having an agenda forced upon you. Those that had a subject they wanted to discuss (me!) went to the front of the room, announced the title of the issue they wanted to cover and posted it on a large board. Anyone interested in joining the discussion would gather around at a designated area. We spent the whole afternoon going from table to table, and conversation to conversation, to chat with other business owners, and figure out solutions together.

I like this format because, in launching their own businesses, entrepreneurs usually accumulate a ton of information on various topics, so in a sense we become experts ourselves, and that allows for a very useful - and lively - exchange.

My big question was how to use online social networks (blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn or others) to market our businesses. I found out that companies online are coming up with applications, or software, they can customize to attract potential clients. One startup called 8 Coupons is looking to devise a widget that people will place on their Facebook page to let their friends and contacts know what discount coupons they're using in their neighborhood, and in that way drive traffic to their site, which offers the coupons themselves. (For more on how to use Facebook for business see Marci Alboher's recent post, and check out the November issue of Inc. Magazine to see how 5 companies are using widgets as a marketing tool - unfortunately the article isn't available online as of yet.)

Another way to use social networks is to have people leave testimonials about you on LinkedIn, or, you can respond to questions that people pose in the "Answers" section - you'll get top billing as an "expert" if you reply to enough of them. This is one subject that's evolving as we speak and it's definitely peaked my interest, so stayed tuned for updates.

From there we went on to something called "speed-geeking", which is similar to speed-dating but instead of potential partners showcasing their romantic talents, entrepreneurs tried to get 3-4 participants to "fall in love" with their business ideas for 7 minutes, at which point a horn would blow and the crew would move on to the next startup-in-waiting. I was able to see first hand which pitches worked and which didn't, and to realize that I have some work to do with regards to my own pitch...(yikes!).

There were almost two dozen hopefuls vying for the Best Startup prize, with some very innovative ideas. The winner? A company called UpNext.com (that's the creator on the left) who offers 3-D mapping of Manhattan with a social networking component. The 2nd place prize went to BricaBox.com, makers of website building software, and a company called BeenVerified, which verifies that you are who you say you are online, won 3rd place.

As I walked out I stopped by to chat for a few minutes with John Havens from BlogTalkRadio and gave him my quick thoughts on the event (click here if you'd like to listen to the 7-min. podcast).

I got home exhausted but with my head full of ideas. Get ready for Mogulette Camp!

Using blogging software to build a website

I've had a great experience using Blogger to create my blog, so when I found out I could also use this type of software to build a website, my ears pricked up. Nowadays it seems like everyone has to have their own site, so companies are scrambling to come up with ways to make programming more user-friendly, and that's good news for solopreneurs, freelancers and small business startups like us.

One of the companies my business counselor, Karen-Michelle Mirko, from the Lower Manhattan Business Solutions Center suggested I check out is SquareSpace. They have various packages to choose from but the basic one starts at 7$/month and you get a wide variety of layouts, hosting, visitor stats, and the ability to place ads with Google Adsense, so you can make money. The business packages start at $25 and also include domain mapping (that way your url will show your own domain name), polls, and a FAQ page, among other things. The only problem is tech support...they're only accessible through email - no live assistance - which might become a problem in an emergency, if people can't download your site for some reason.

Another blogging software company to consider is WordPress. It's very similar to Blogger except that they allow you to add additional pages, which Blogger doesn't at the moment. You can get your site started for free but in order to use your own domain name it's $10/ year, which is nothing. Unfortunately they too only offer email support, and they don't allow you to place ads, although they're apparently working on a premium upgrade to bypass this.

Other companies to look into: TypePad, SiteRubix and Microsoft Office Live. One caveat is that this type of software is best for service firms that are interested in generating leads. If what you want is to sell products you'll need e-commerce functionality, which is more complicated. For that you can try GoDaddy, Kingdom 247, Template Monster, or 1&1.com.

So here's a list of things I look for when deciding which programming software to choose from:

• do I like the templates they offer? can they be customized? can I change the color on their fonts and backgrounds, etc.?
  
  
• how many pages can I add?
  
  
• how many email addresses will I get? (you'll want to set up different ones to target different types of clients)
  
  
• can I place ads with Google Adsense?
  
  
• what kind of customer support do they have?
  
  
• can I use my own domain name?
  
  
• what plugins/widgets are available?
  
  
• do they offer down-loadable file backup so that I have copies of all my files?

Do you have any experience - good or bad - using website development software? Please chime in!

Branding Strategies for Your Business

Here's a question every inquiring Mogulette mind wants to know: How do I make my product or service stand out? Well, according to branding expert Romana Mirza, it all begins with you (that's her in the pictures, giving the Mogulettes a presentation). She says that a company's image is a reflection of it's owner, so one way to start is by asking yourself, what words describe me, and my business?

Take a look at Target, for example. Webster's definition of the word is "something aimed or fired at" or, "a desired goal". Brilliant! When I go shopping, I want to be able to find what I'm looking for, or "target" the products I want. The metaphor of the red bull's eye is also pretty effective, and quite unforgettable. I guess that's what branding is to me, having my product or service leave a lasting impression. Remember the old Blackglama fur ads? Glamorous women like Liz Taylor, Jane Fonda, and Carol Channing - naked, except for the black mink coat - with a caption that read "What makes a legend most?". Sexy, and fabulous. In the same way, the "Got milk" ads made drinking milk sexy, and Nike's "Just do it" made sweating sexy, and definitely unforgettable.

But for our brands to become this memorable, it takes some deep soul searching along with a heavy dose of investigative work. That's what Romana does at her recently launched brand strategy firm, Studio Pinpoint - help clients bring out what's unique about their company. She suggests focusing on three areas:

First, your work. Ask yourself: What do you do differently? What do you offer that others don't? What is your personal and unique contribution to your work? What do you want your company to stand for?

Then, your clients. Ask them: What do you think I'm about? What special qualities do I bring to the process/outcome? What did you like about our experience together?

And finally, research your competition: What's their brand positioning? Key messages? Product presentation?

Armed with this information you can then pass it along to those helping you with your marketing: logo designer, copywriter, web designer, so they can come up with a message that clearly and accurately portrays you and your product/service - to make it....memorable!

Digital Resources for Entrepreneurs

Need a little hand-holding to narrow down your target market? Are you finding it difficult to get information on your competition? You can now book a half-hour one-on-one session with a librarian at the Science Industry and Business library (remember "SIBL"? see related post), for free of course, and they'll help you with the above plus: business leads, industry research, marketing strategies, potential client lists, vendor lists, etc., etc., etc. I've already set my appointment for next week!

Also new at the library (or at least new to me!): business eBooks and audiobooks which you can download from their website and read from your computer or iPod. Here's some I found interesting:

Basic Black, The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and In Life!) (audiotape), by Cathie Black, who, as current president of Hearst Magazines, persuaded Oprah to launch a magazine.

Avon, Building the World's Premier Company for Women (eBook), about how this direct sales company, which you never seem to see anywhere, just keeps growing and growing.

The Big Book of Small Business, You Don't Have to Run Your Business By The Seat of Your Pants

Blog Marketing (eBook), by Jeremy Wright

And I only got through the "B's"!

Moving on to video, Cornell University has compiled an extensive list of video clips with entrepreneurs which is available to the public on a wide variety of topics. There's 1310 clips just on startup business planning! What's also great is they have it listed by business name and category, so you can actually choose a company in your industry and hear how they got their start, or what resources they used to get off the ground.

I read the print version of these two fascinating articles by NY Sun writer Liz Peek about women entrepreneurs but they are also happily available digitally:

Natori Celebrates 30 years at Breakneck Speed profiles Josie Natori, who started trading stocks at 22 and went on to build a fashion empire that generates $150 million in retail sales a year (one day that could be us!!)

Lulu Wang Throttles Back is a about a self made millionairess who went from rags to riches and is now cutting back on her corporate duties to follow her passion for vintage race driving.

That's it for this digital tour. 'Til soon!

Mogulette blog lands in the NY Times, again!

A big "thanks" to journalist/speaker/writing coach Marci Alboher who recently mentioned my post about Email Newsletters in her NY Times blog/column, Shifting Careers for a second time. I also received a comment from a reader on that same topic which I found useful so I'm including it here:

Another good tip for email marketing is to shorten your email to a reasonable size by including the first paragraph of a block of text, then providing a link that says "read more" which brings users to your site [you can program your software to do this by going to the "settings" section]. Not only will you keep your campaign email from turning into a monster, you can also check your hits data on your site and see how effective you mailing list campaign is. I've used hits data to fine tune my layout and announcements so that they are interesting to everyone. Multiple announcements have multiple links, so I can see which events/news were the most popular.

Do you have experience using email newsletters? Please share it!

A Mogulette goes to Paris

Bonjour Mogulettes! I'm back from my trip totally inspired by the style and flair of Paris. The French love to surround themselves with beauty. Everywhere you turn there's a statue, a building, a park or some other enchanting thing to enjoy. All the seats in the outdoor cafés look toward the street so you get prime viewing of the lovely ladies walking by, who get dressed up even to go shopping. It was cold and drizzly but I hardly noticed because I was so excited to be there. My last visit was over ten years ago and the city seemed even prettier than I remembered, so I quickly embarked into a whirlwind of tours and sightseeing.

On the outbound flight I sat next to a lovely Parisian jeune fille (that's young woman - I can't stop plugging in le francais!) and by the time we landed at the Charles de Gaulle airport I had a long list of places to visit.

One of those was Les Jardins de Luxembourg, where I stopped by on my third day and was immediately smitten. Dainty little flower beds and softly gurgling fountains give this little jewel of a park an air of peace and tranquility. A large circular pond sits in the middle surrounded by a gallery of statues, which upon closer inspection I realized were all of French queens and illustrious women. Trés mogulett-ish! (Want to see more pictures? Visit my Flickr page).

The park seemed surprisingly full of people for the middle of a work day, reflecting perhaps the fact that unemployment is high in France. That topic came up the following day when I joined a handful of "locals" for lunch. The ladies (pictured below) were all Anglos - either American or British - but have lived in Paris for years. They talked about how in spite of the lack of jobs it's very difficult to set up a small business in France because of the high taxes and piles of paperwork that entrepreneurs are burdened with. We're lucky to have all the free resources and support that we have here in the states - we need to take advantage of that!

The trip ended all too soon but I returned with renewed energy and positivity. When I first started considering the idea of going to Paris the thought of spending time and money on something other than my work was terrifying. How dare I take a vacation? Coming up with a budget and getting support from my friends helped me to put things into perspective and overcome my fears. Now I clearly see the benefits of taking time off - had I not gone I'd probably be feeling pretty frustrated right now, but by spending time in such a beautiful city I came back feeling abundant, and if I feel abundant, I'm more likely to attract abundance into my life.

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into." --Wayne Dyer

Au revoir!

Would $50,000 be enough to get you started?

How does $50,000 sound to get you off the ground? That's what Mirassou Winery is offering women entrepreneurs if their business plan wins the "Make Your Dreams Come True" contest they're sponsoring. That could buy all the things on my wish list: laptop, printer, virtual assistant, personal masseuse (just kidding, unfortunately)...plus much more. The trick is you have to submit a rockin' business plan by December 15th, so that was incentive enough to get me (and a handful of the Mogulettes!) to sign up to Baruch College's 4-week Bootcamp on how to write them.

Elissa Grossman (that's her in the blue jacket next to yours truly) teaches courses on business management for college students that typically span a whole semester but she's doing an abbreviated version for entrepreneurs, starting with the elements of a business plan, which she covered in the first session, along with great examples of what an executive smmary should and shouldn't look like.

The second class was focused on the marketing plan, which is all about information gathering - where to get data about your target market, what the benefits and limitations are to different types of research, how to conduct surveys (one place to try out is surveymonkey.com, where you get the first 10 questions in a survey free), how to scope out your competition. Then she moved on to narrowing down your target market and selecting a marketing mix to reach them.

The third class centered around money - how much you need vs how much you want. This part was cool - Elissa recommends shutting your eyes and imagining the process that's involved in making a sale. Then make an outline of that in order to come up with a list of costs, like how much will the virtual assistant cost, plus the web developer, plus the computer, the desk and the chair, the masseuse (no...just kidding again) and so on, for each task. How much will be variable, or fixed? All this will help in coming up with a price for your goods and services. But that's not all that determines price - there's the perceived value (you can charge a premium for goods that are new in the market, or are complex, or where price comparisons are difficult). Competition also plays a role, as does strategy, like special pricing promotions that you might do.

The second half of the class was about sales forecasting and breakeven analysis, which I won't even attempt to summarize. But she made it interesting by giving lots of real life examples of how companies used these numbers to make adjustments and run their operations more efficiently.

BTW, Elissa's available if you'd like feedback on your business plan, as are other counselors on staff at Baruch's Field Center. These services are offered for free.

So, sharpen up your pencils and put your fabulous ideas on paper...you could win 50,000 big ones! Like they say: you gotta be in it to win it...

Next week I'll be away on a short vacation to Paris, yes, the "city of lights"! My friend invited me to stay with her and I'm using my miles to get there, so it's a great deal. Stay tuned for my report on how the French do business - I expect to be doing heavy duty research into their chocolate industry. Au revoir!

Upcoming Workshops

If you live in or near Manhattan and have an interest in all things digital media and Web 2.0, don't miss the Small Business Tech Tutorials! There are workshops on blogging for business, online video basics, site customization & monetization and much, much more. Here's a list of upcoming classes. Click on the "Google Calendar" button on the bottom to find out more info and to RSVP.

Market your Business with Email Newsletters

Aside from emails sent by friends and family, my favorites things in my inbox are newsletters - and I get quite a few of them. There's one from NYremezla with updates on Latino artist events around town, Duct Tape Marketing usually has interesting ways to promote your business, and The Spacialist doles out a weekly tip on getting rid of clutter. Oh and I forgot, there's dating advice from my friend Melissa's Love Notes (I need all the help I can get!).

Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your community and your clients, to give them a little something for free and let them know you're thinking about them. This week Maisha Walker of Message Medium spoke at length about newsletters in her internet marketing class, which is being held at NYANA, a business center that provides training and micro loans to entrepreneurs (that's Maisha, left, with Maria Paulino of NYANA on the right). I know many of the Mogulettes are interested in newsletters, so I'm including some of the highlights of what she said.

One of the most widely used newsletter providers is Constant Contact, who starts out charging $15.00 a month for 500 emails and then goes up from there. The big downside with them is they place their own ads at the bottom of the newsletters, which isn't great. Feedblitz offers a free version but again, you'll have to allow them to place 3rd party ads on your emails. Luckily there's many other ad-free options at comparable prices, and I researched them all for you!

iContact - starts at $9.95/mo. for 500 emails with a $12 discount if you sign up for a year (first 15 days are free)
AWeber - $19.95/mo. for up to 70,000 emails
Campaigner - $25/mo. for up to 2500 emails
Vertical Response - $15/mo. for up to 2500 emails (first 25 emails are free)
MyEmma - $30/mo. for up to 1000 emails plus $250.00 for a template
SwiftPage - $14.95/mo. for up to 250 emails; $30/mo. for up to 1000; 15% discount if you sign up for a year
StreamSend - $5.95/mo. for up to 500 emails; $9.95/mo. for up to 2000 (first 30 days are free)
PatronMail - call for quotes
Benchmark Email - $9.95/mo. for up to 600; 10% discount if paid annually and the 13th month is free (plus first 30 days are free)

Maisha's Tips

• Avoid 3rd party advertising (unless you're getting paid for it!).
  
  
• What people look at first before opening an email is who it's coming from, so don't use a generic address. Instead, segment your list and use a different address for each group you send the newsletter to.
  
  
• Define your purpose - is it for reading or for selling products?
  
  
• Keep the layout consistent - if you have four pictures on the first one do the same for all the rest.
  
  
• Decide on timing - how often will you send it? (Maisha suggests to start slow - quarterly)
  
  
• Link your images and text to relevant pages on your site, or create landing pages.
  
  
• Create compelling subject lines to get your emails opened - focus on what the benefits are to your readers.

My next big task is to chose one of those providers above and then, start composing! If you have experience with newsletters and would like to share it with us, please do!

Mogulette to launch bookstore in East Harlem

I just love hearing success stories from fellow Mogulettes-in-the-making!

When I first met Aurora Anaya-Cerda at a Latina writer's group at the beginning of this year, I was instantly captivated by her business idea: to launch a bookstore in East Harlem, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Manhattan which currently doesn't have one but is sorely in need of one. Back then she was still very much in the planning stages of her concept, but aided by a boundless amount of enthusiasm and motivation.

Fast forward a few months to last week, when I caught up with her at an internet marketing class. With a big smile on her face she shared her exciting news: "La Casa Azul", the name she's given the store (it's named after Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's home in Mexico City and it means "blue house") will be launching in the Fall!

Aurora grew up in a place similar to East Harlem (also known as "El Barrio"), an immigrant neighborhood lacking businesses, programs and services that benefit the community, and instead where countless liquor stores, dilapidated buildings, drugs and gangs abound. Her belief is that El Barrio needs a store like La Casa Azul Bookstore - a place of knowledge and culture, where the community can come together to enjoy activities such as author signings, art receptions, educational workshops, not to mention the best organic coffee and Mexican hot chocolate in the neighborhood!

This enterprising "chica" first got the idea of owning a bookstore during her junior year in college. After working at an independent bookstore in California she knew that I one day she'd have to open one of her own. But it wasn't until many years later when she arrived to New York that she was able to reawaken that dream that had been dormant for years! In the Spring of 2006 she came across the East Harlem Business Capital Corporation, a neighborhood organization that helps entrepreneurs, and took the first of many courses on business. These classes served as the catalyst for more opportunities, including access to more resources, advice on financing, leads to support groups (like the Mogulettes!) and the push she needed to move into the world of bookselling.

Two years ago Aurora didn't know the first thing about a business plan but now she has a firm grasp of the whole start-up process. She has an investor who believes in her vision, and is awaiting funding for the remainder of the start up costs. Below is her mission statement and goals:

La Casa Azul will be an independent bookstore/café, offering new and used books in English and Spanish. The store will offer a wide range of books and music from the United States, México, Latin America and the Caribbean. La Casa Azul will also carry Mexican jewelry, art and clothing. Our mission is to provide the community with contemporary bilingual literature, featuring works by Latino authors.

Our goals are:

• To provide culturally relevant books and events.
• To heighten community awareness and political consciousness regarding issues that affect East Harlem residents.

For more information about the store's grand opening, email: lacasaazulbookstore@gmail.com.

About Aurora:
Aurora Anaya-Cerda acquired experience in the daily operations of a bookstore during her employment at two independent bookstores. A graduate of UCLA, Aurora has a double Bachelor’s degree in History and Chicana/o Studies and a minor in Education. She taught middle school for 2 years and had been in the education field for the last 6 years. Since her arrival to New York in July 2005, she has been an active member of the East Harlem community as a participant and supporter of cultural and educational events.

Aurora is definitely on her way to becoming a full-fledged Mogulette, and I'm looking forward to attending her launch party!

If your business has experienced success or reached a highly anticipated milestone, let me know! Your stories inspire all of us, so please share them!!